Job 13
Butler16. The deceived and the deceiver are His. God will make both the deceiver and the deceived accountable to Himself; it is from His sufferance that there are any such; in infinite wisdom and holiness He disposeth of the errors of men and of those that lead them into error, ordering how far any man shall deceive, and to what extent his deceit shall prevail; and, further, the Lord improves both to serve His own ends, to bring about His counsels and promote his own glory. Caryl.
17-23. He gives many instances of God’s management of the children of men, crossing their purposes, and serving His own by them and upon them, overruling all their counsels, overpowering all their attempts, and overcoming all their oppositions. What changes does God make with men, what turns does He give to them; how easily, how surprisingly!
24,25. They that were driving on their projects with full speed are strangely bewildered and at a loss; they know not where they are nor what they do, are unsteady in their counsels, and uncertain in their motions, off and on, this way and that way, wandering like men in a desert, groping like men in the dark, and staggering like men in drink. God can soon nonplus the deepest politicians, and bring the greatest wits to their wits’ end—to show that wherein they deal proudly, he is above them. Thus are the revolutions of kingdoms wonderfully brought about by an overruling Providence. Heaven and earth are shaken, but the Lord sits King forever, and with Him we look for a kingdom that cannot be shaken. H.
Job has thus accurately defined how far he and the friends are at one; they agree in ascribing all events to God. But from this point their paths diverge. J. F. G.
1. Lo, mine eye hath seen all this, Mine ear hath heard and understood it.
2. What ye know, the same do I know also: I am not inferior unto you.
3. Surely I would speak to the Almighty, And I desire to reason with God.
4. But ye are forgers of lies, Ye are all physicians of no value.
5. Oh that ye would altogether hold your peace! And it should be your wisdom.
6. Hear now my reasoning, And hearken to the pleadings of my lips.
7. Will ye speak unrighteously for God, And talk deceitfully for him?
8. Will ye show partiality to him? Will ye contend for God?
9. Is it good that he should search you out? Or as one deceiveth a man, will ye deceive him?
10. He will surely reprove you, If ye do secretly show partiality.
11. Shall not his majesty make you afraid, And his dread fall upon you?
12. Your memorable sayings are proverbs of ashes, Your defences are defences of clay.
13. Hold your peace, let me alone, that I may speak, And let come on me what will.
14. Wherefore should I take my flesh in my teeth, And put my life in mine hand?
15. Though he slay me, yet will I wait for him: Nevertheless I will maintain my ways before him.
16. This also shall be my salvation, That a godless man shall not come before him.
17. Hear diligently my speech, And let my declaration be in your ears.
18. Behold now, I have set my cause in order; I know that I shall be justified.
19. Who is he that will contend with me? For then would I hold my peace and give up the ghost.
20. Only do not two things unto me, Then will I not hide myself from thy face:
21. Withdraw thine hand far from me; And let not thy terror make me afraid.
22. Then call thou, and I will answer; Or let me speak, and answer thou me.
23. How many are mine iniquities and sins? Make me to know my transgression and my sin.
24. Wherefore hidest thou thy face, And holdest me for thine enemy? 25 Wilt thou harass a driven leaf? And wilt thou pursue the dry stubble? 26 For thou writest bitter things against me, And makest me to inherit the iniquities of my youth:
THERE is no pause between this and the preceding chapter; in the first two verses Job winds up his argument with the words which he used in the beginning of his speech. Cook.
1-22. Having finished his delineation of God’s might and wisdom as they act in the world, Job looks back upon his picture, saying that he knows all this as well as his friends (vs. 1, 2); but his calamities receive thereby no solution. In spite of this knowledge he desires to plead his cause before God (v. 3). And they who sought to use this wisdom and might of God against him were mere forgers of lies, who gave a false as well as feeble explanation of his troubles (vs. 4, 5). They were nothing but partisans for God. And as they had invoked the omniscience of God against him he will threaten them with the judgment of the same God, who will search out their hidden insincerity, and before whom their old maxims will be but “proverbs of ashes” (vs. 6-12). With this stinging rebuke to his friends Job turns from them unto God. He will adventure all and go into His presence to plead his cause, come what may (vs. 13-15). This courage which he feels is token to him that he shall be victorious, for a godless man would not dare to come before God. He knows he shall be found in the right (vs. 16-19). Only he will beg for two conditions: that God would remove His hand from him, and that He would not terrify him by His majesty; then he is ready to answer if God will call, or to speak if God will answer (vs. 20-22). A. B. D.
3. Taking Zophar at his word, Job would invite God’s answer by making plea to Him. In the absence of a daysman to represent his cause, Job approaches God directly, as indeed he has approached Him before, but in much better spirit now. J. F. G.—This desire to plead with God must be attributed to real inward faith; the plagues which had fallen on Job confound him; he cannot reconcile them, or other events in the world’s history, with what he believes of God, but they do not drive him from God; far from renouncing God, he turns away from all other things, comes to Him, and is quite sure that his honesty will be recognized and approved. (See v. 18.) Cook.
27. Thou puttest my feet also in the stocks, and markest all my paths; Thou settest a bound to the soles of my feet: 28 Though I am like a rotten thing that consumeth, Like a garment that is moth-eaten.
4. They framed a wrong hypothesis concerning the Divine Providence and misrepresented it, as if it did never remarkably afflict any but wicked men in this world; and from thence they drew a false judgment concerning Job, that he was certainly a hypocrite. For this gross mistake, both in doctrine and application, he thinks an indictment of forgery lies against them. H.—What the friends have said, true though it is, is only the half-truth, which in their application of it has all the effect of a lie. Two essential elements they have ignored—the fact, illustrated by Job’s affliction, that man may be punished though righteous; and the converse, taught by obvious facts, that man may be wicked and prosper. Hence their philosophizings are of no worth at all. J. F. G.
5. The advice is not mere irony, it is more than a taunt, for true wisdom teaches in the first place the limits of our knowledge, and the duty of silence when we are really ignorant. Cook.
7,8. He tells them plainly, (1) that God and His cause did not need such advocates—“Will you think to contend for God, as if His justice were clouded and wanted to be cleared up, or as if He were at a loss what to say and wanted you to speak for Him? Will you, who are so weak and passionate, put in for the honor of pleading God’s cause?” (2) That God’s cause suffered by such management. Under pretence of justifying God in afflicting Job, they magisterially condemn him as a hypocrite and a bad man. “This,” says he, “is speaking wickedly” (for uncharitableness and censoriousness are wickedness, great wickedness; it is an offence to God to wrong our brethren), “it is talking deceitfully, for you condemn one whom yet perhaps your own consciences cannot but acquit. Your principles are false and your arguings fallacious; and will it excuse you to say, It is for God?” H.
7-11. Their advocacy of God is an injustice to Job, and an evil service rendered to God, which cannot escape punishment from Him. They set themselves up as God’s advocates, and at the same time they are partial in His favor, as they are twice reminded and given to understand. They conceal their better knowledge by the assumption of an earnest tone and a bearing expressive of the strongest conviction that they are in the right. Such advocacy must be put to shame when He who needs no concealment of the truth for His justification will bring all untruth into the light. Delitzsch.—Let them consider what a God He is into whose service they had thus thrust themselves, and to whom they really did so much dis-service, and inquire whether they could give Him a good account of what they did. Let them consider the strictness of His scrutiny and inquiries concerning them, “Is it good that He should search you out? Can you bear to have the principles looked into which you go upon in your censures, and to have the bottom of the matter found out?” It concerns us all seriously to consider whether it will be to our advantage or no that God searches the heart. H.
13-22. Job now turns from his friends, whom he commands to be silent, to his great plea with God, resuming the intention expressed in v. 3. The passage has two parts: one preliminary (vs. 13-16), exhibiting a singular picture of the conflict between resolution and fear in Job’s mind. He will go before God, come upon him what will (v. 13). Yet he cannot hide from himself that it may be at the hazard of his life. Yet he will not be deterred; he will defend his ways to God’s face (vs. 14, 15). And yet again, this very courage which he has, arising from his sense of innocence, is a token to him that he shall be victorious (v. 16). The second part is vs. 17-22. Feeling that the victory is already his, he commands his friends to mark his pleading of his cause. He knows he shall be found in the right. Nay, no one will even plead against him (vs. 17-19). Only he begs two conditions of God—that He would lift His afflicting hand from him, and that He would not affright him with His terror (vs. 20-22). A. B. D.
14. In the first clause Job asks why he should cling to mere life, his torn and mutilated flesh, as with the desperate tenacity of a wild beast; in the latter he resolves to risk his life, to expose himself to any danger in pleading with God.
15. Though He slay me, yet will I wait for Him. Or, Lo, He may slay me, yet will I wait for Him—i.e., abide hopefully the issue of His judgment. This appears to be the true sense of the passage. It expresses Job’s own feeling, as is shown distinctly by the next verse, “He shall be my salvation,” about which no question is raised; it corresponds exactly with the expression in Psalm 38:15, a psalm throughout full of reminiscences of Job, and here apparently adopting his very words; the connection of thought is unbroken, whereas the rendering adopted by many commentators introduces an ill-timed exclamation of hopelessness. Cook.—Job’s lowest despondency is generally the season when his strangely supported spirit mounts up to the strongest expression of his never-to-be-extinguished hope. T. Lewis.
Literally it reads, “Lo, He may slay me, yet will I wait for him,” and the meaning is that, so sure is Job of the justice of his cause, that at the hazard of his life he will vindicate himself before God and wait in sure expectation of a favorable verdict. Our version is a truthful expression of the faith in God’s righteousness which underlies Job’s words. The sentence has become one of the standard formulas of the Christian faith. It expresses the right attitude of the soul toward a God of infinite love and truth, who yet, through the very depth and vast range of His counsels, is sometimes hidden from His children. He that stakes his life on God’s truth will never be the loser. V.
Job’s triumph is, in the most absolute and unqualified manner, the triumph of faith over sense. It would seem as though everything conspired to show that God was persecuting him, and treating him as an enemy. Yet from an angry God he can turn nowhere but back to God Himself, in whom he does and must confide, in spite of His apparent hostility. W. H. G.—Everything is against his trust in God. He has been stricken, terribly stricken, when he had no consciousness that he deserved it. And He who permitted this—instead of appearing to explain the mystery—has hidden Himself from His servant. All around in the darkness does the patriarch grope after Him, but it is in vain. The next blow may cleave him to the ground, but he fears it not. He looks calmly to the threatening cloud. Let it come. It will make no difference in his confidence—“Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him: but I will maintain mine own ways before Him.” F. Greeves.
15,16. To maintain His ways, to be true in the face of God and the iron universe to that perfect and upright ideal which has hitherto shaped his life, is in Job’s soul the supreme imperative, compared with which the desire for restored health and property or any earthly happiness never once comes to mention. “There is in man a higher than love of happiness; he can do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness! Was it not to preach forth this same higher that sages and martyrs, the poet and the priest, in all times have spoken and suffered; bearing testimony, through life and through death, of the God-like that is in man, and how in the God-like only has he strength and freedom? . . . Love not pleasure; love God. This is the everlasting Yea, wherein all contradiction is solved; wherein whoso walks and works it is well with him." (Carlyle.)—The encounter with the selfishness of his friends has carried Job over from the everlasting No to the everlasting Yea. Farewell now, fear and complaining; farewell, trust in the outworn maxims of men; face to face with death and the worst that his unseen enemy can do, Job turns solemnly from his fellows and commits himself anew to the righteousness that has hitherto been his life, in supreme faith that its issue, though now he sees it not, must be salvation. J. F. G.
If God is worthy to be trusted—and that question is already settled once for all—God is to be trusted always; to be trusted because of what He is, and not merely because of the proofs of his worthiness to be trusted, that are multiplied to us hour by hour. There are times when we cannot understand the ways of God; times when God’s ways might be so interpreted as to seem to show a lack of wisdom or a lack of love; but then it is that our trust in God is to be rested on as having a surer basis than our understanding of His present providences. No child of God has, indeed, a true trust in God, unless he can feel and say in all sincerity concerning God, when God’s ways are most inscrutable, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.” S. S. T.
16. My salvation.** This leaves no doubt as to the very innermost feeling of Job. He is sure of salvation, though he knows not how it may be possible, or in what form it may come. Cook.—A godless man shall not come before Him. A godless man will not dare to go before God; but Job dares and desires; and this courage, sweet evidence to himself of his innocence, he says will be his salvation—that is, will secure him victory in his plea with God. He hardly distinguishes between his own consciousness of innocence and his innocence itself and the proof of it. He is so conscious of it that he is sure it will appear before God. A. B. D.
18. Behold, now have I set in order my cause; I know that I shall be justified.** It is an appeal from the God who works in the impenetrable darkness without to the God who has put holy impulses within, and a trust in the guidance of that honest human heart which “condemns him not.” This declaration we may regard as the bed-rock, so to say, of the Book of Job. To appreciate what it means for Job to make it, reflect that the wisdom of man, the testimony of the past, the utterance of trusted friends, have all raised their voice in unison with a mysterious visitation of God to declare the contrary. Job is launching out into the darkness alone, staking life and destiny on the belief that the powers that work unseen, in spite of inexorable appearances, are for righteousness. Doth Job fear God for nought? The sneer of Satan is more than answered. J. F. G.
19. Who will contend with me?** Who will oppose me with good reasons—who will bring a valid argument against me? The words are a triumphant expression of the feeling that no one will or can. For then would I hold my peace, and give up the ghost—that is, in case any one should appear against him with proof of his sin. The words form a splendid climax to the declaration of his consciousness of innocence. He is sure he shall be found in the right—nay, none will be found to contend with him; if he thought any one could, he would be silent and die. A. B. D.
He is assured God will not maintain the cause against him, will not assert that he really drew upon himself all these calamities; but that if he be mistaken in that conviction, if God really should impute guilt to him, he has no alternative but to lie down and die in silence. There is a strong undercurrent of hope in this, for it is clear that Job is confident that when God speaks it will be in righteousness and love. (See 14:15.) Cook.—These words indicate how deeply Job’s avowal has taken hold of his life. So sure is he of its truth that if it were possible for one to make good the opposite, then life would have no more significance for him; his whole being is committed to this position of his.
20-24. Comparing this passage with 9:32-35, we see that the two things for which Job asks here are just the boons that he associates with a daysman. Note, then, the place of this plea. As soon as Job, committing life and destiny to his integrity, feels that he has reached a point where God and he may stand together, and where, believing that God will hear and heed, he may set in order his cause, he makes his plea for that which a daysman would secure. J. F. G.